by Max Candee
“A tree?”
“Yes, and half the time that’s all too obvious.” Granny giggled. “He can be as dense as wood. But all things considered, he’s a decent man, and he lives close enough for me to pay him a visit.”
“Do you go to see him often?”
“Certainly not. One can’t visit Leshiy too often or for too long. He’s intolerable in large doses.” She smiled at me. “You want to come meet him?”
Taking a walk with my grandmother did sound like a lot of fun. But for some reason, it didn’t feel like what I was here for. I was trying to accomplish something more than that — wasn’t I? “I don’t know,” I said sincerely. “Maybe next time? If you haven’t seen him for a while, maybe it’s best you catch up, just the two of you?”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Granny said. She went into the bedroom and returned with a flowery kerchief on her head and a broom in her hand. She wagged her finger at me and said, “Don’t get into any mischief while I’m out.”
I scratched my head. “What mischief could I get into, Granny, all by myself? I think I’ll take a nap.”
She looked at me suspiciously, and I wondered if I had made a mistake. But which one? Something funny was happening to my memory. My life had been a little too sheltered and simple, maybe. For years, I’d awaken in the morning in my room, do the chores around the house, play with Cat the Hare, take a nap in the afternoon. Then cook for my grandmother. My mind seemed to focus on the idea of a nice nap; I could hardly think about anything else. I yawned.
“The hands will look after you while you nap,” Baba Yaga said. Her calm, melodic voice was the most important thing in the entire world. I had to do exactly what that voice said. “And the skulls.”
“They always do,” I said, heading for my bed. “Oh yes. I’m so happy here in your house, Granny.”
Just before falling asleep, I glanced out the window. Granny was pulling an intricate wooden bowl out of a small lean-to near the fence. She danced around it, kicking her feet up, climbed inside, swept her footsteps with a broom, and cried out, “Ready, steady, go!”
The mortar flew up into the sky and Granny waved down at me, just as she always did every day. It was such a happy sight. For a moment, I wondered if I had seen a photo of that somewhere; it would be nice to have one. But then I shook my head. Why would I need a photo of something I see every day?
I grinned and waved back at Granny from the porch. Then I dropped into the bed.
* * *
A splash of shocking coldness jerked me out of my slumber. I screamed in instant all-consuming rage, rolling out of the bed. My heart sank into the swirling shadows of dark magic, and I had to restrain myself from zapping everything around me with blue flames. What was going on?
The first shock passed and I gasped for air. Still screaming, I wiped freezing water from my eyes and looked around. One of Baba Yaga’s domesticated hands was floating just above me, holding a dripping bucket. It looked smug.
“Go away,” I cried out, fighting to calm down. My belly was heaving in spasms, all my clothes were wet, and my teeth began to chatter with cold.
The hand dropped the bucket and dove in to attack me. No — it actually dove in to tickle me.
“Squire!” I yelled. “How come I didn’t recognize you? And what are you doing?”
My old friend bobbed left and right like he was shrugging. He dropped a note into my lap.
I stood up, pulling wet hair out of my face. Why did he have to wake me up, and so dramatically? “Let’s see,” I said.
The note said: Let’s go see your father.
I frowned. “What father?” I asked. “I came to find my Granny. I found her.”
Squire froze for a moment as though in surprise and then scurried away. He returned with a pencil and wrote, Are you losing your memory?
“Of course not.”
Do you remember that you came here to see your father, Koschey?
What is he talking about? I’m an orphan, I thought. I don’t have a father. Feeling rather confused, I smiled. “You’re scaring me. Koschey is a character from old fairy tales.”
Squire flew a frustrated circle around me and struck my forehead with a knuckle. Painfully. Then he scribbled a few sentences on the paper.
She’s making you forget, his note said. She hypnotized you to sleep while she visits her friend. Now is the time to see your father. Follow me.
Squire didn’t let me ask any more questions. He crumpled the paper and flew off to toss it into the smoldering fireplace in Granny’s room. He returned and pulled me by the hand.
He seemed so purposeful that I could not resist. Clearly, Squire was trying to tell me something. As ludicrous as it sounded, he seemed to believe he’d found my father. I almost laughed out loud. But I walked after him.
The other hands were everywhere. Still a little unsteady on my feet, I sat in Baba Yaga’s armchair and observed them going about their daily tasks. They seemed busier than usual. I suspected they knew I was up to something — even if I didn’t quite know what it was — and they were extra careful to spy on me. There had to be something I could do.
I wondered whether I could put them to sleep like I did with Squire. After all, surely all hands worked in the same way? It was worth a try. I slowly rose to my full height and shouted, “Go to sleep, hands!”
The hands froze in their places and then fell to the floor with dull thumps, like so many ripe fruits from a tree.
I dashed into the kitchen and yelled there too, “Sleep, hands! Go to sleep!”
All the hands stopped whatever they’d been doing. They rested on the table and countertop and in the sink, like strange sculptures.
Squire punched my shoulder gently. He pointed toward the corridor, urging me on.
I hurried down the corridor, trying to stay quiet so as not to awaken the hands in the process. I stopped at the end of the corridor. I felt as though very recently, maybe just yesterday, something important had happened in this very place.
“Why did you bring me here, Squire?” I asked. “It’s just a corridor.”
He dropped a new note into my hands. Remember you saw the Iron Queen open this door to speak with your father? Open it now!
“Ugh,” I said, straining my memory. Yes … there was something in what Squire wrote … something familiar, important and emotional. “A door, huh?”
I stared at the blank wall before me, wondering if I had finally gone mad. There was no door. And why was I standing here, talking with this creepy floating hand? I yawned and removed a lock of wet, cold hair from my forehead. I’ve been sleepwalking, I thought. I need to go back to bed. I stretched, cringing at the touch of my soaked clothes, and turned to go back to my room.
Squire charged at me and slapped me across my face. The sound exploded like a gunshot in the quiet house. My cheeks burned.
“What—” I began.
Squire dove at me again and smacked me again. He punched the empty wall as if insisting I had to go there.
“Ah, is that what you want?” I cried out. “You want to fight? Well, then—”
The hand stuck a finger out and began to tickle me. He was doing it with an air of desperation that I didn’t like in the least.
“Leave me alone, you stupid piece of stone!” I yelled, trying to bat him off.
Squire whizzed back to the kitchen and returned with some paper and a pencil. He dropped to the floor and scribbled furiously.
“I’m tired of you,” I said, stifling a yawn. “Sleep, Squire.”
He shrank and became still.
The shadows in my heart told me to kick him into the farthest corner of the house and burn his paper. That seemed excessive, however, so I just pushed him aside and picked up his unfinished note.
Uncle Misha has sacrificed… the note said.
I chortled. Why did I have to care about some Uncle Misha who had sacrificed something? It was absurd.
I poured myself a glass of water in the kitchen and gulped i
t down. All these disembodied hands were starting to get on my nerves, and especially that thug Squire. I had to get rid of that guy. Maybe I should even burn him, along with his silly note.
But as I dragged my feet into my bedroom, a faded image slowly appeared in my mind’s eye. An old man with a thick beard was carrying me through the forest. We were surrounded by bear cubs. A giant figure — both terrifying and kind, both dangerous and full of love — stood among the boulders behind us. Mama Bear.
I froze just before my bed, my mouth hanging open. “Uncle Misha?” I whispered. “How could I have forgotten you?” Slowly, I turned around and looked into the corridor. “Squire?”
I grabbed a splinter of wood from the pile of tinder in the corner and set one of its ends aflame in the hearth. I ran to where Squire lay lifeless and placed him into the thin flame. In the very next second, he burst into life and hovered a safe distance away from me, waiting.
“I’m sorry, Squire,” I said, blowing out the splinter. “Something bad is happening to me. I had forgotten…” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember the name of the man with the beard who had carried me through the forest in my memories. “Who was that man?”
Squire picked up the pencil and paper and wrote, Stay focused. You have to open this door.
“All this is creeping me out,” I grumbled. I turned to the empty wall and said with all the confidence I could muster, “Open, magic door.”
Nothing happened.
I felt disheartened. Then I carefully sifted through my recent memories. And I realized that those hadn’t been the exact words Granny had uttered the night before. I closed my eyes and thought back to that night. What had happened in this corridor? It seemed to have been about some cage … and an embittered man … and my beloved grandmother.
But now I remembered it, the code phrase that Baba Yaga had used to open that accursed door. In my deepest voice, trying to mimic Granny’s hoarseness, I said, “Open, open, magic door!” I sat down and stood up three times, danced the hula, and did my best to burp.
A few seconds of silence followed, and I thought my lack of knowledge had failed me once again.
Suddenly the door trembled and swung open. And there, right in front of my eyes … was my very own father.
Chapter 15
Dear Diary,
It’s very difficult to describe what it was like to meet a father that, for the longest time, I hadn’t even known I had — and about whom I’d all but forgotten.
And even when I knew I had a father, I certainly had no idea what it would be like to finally meet him. I realize that meeting long-lost relatives is going to be weird for anyone, but even in that context, our chat was seriously, seriously bizarre. We couldn’t hug or do anything else that normal people would do, because Dad was locked in a cage. But we managed to have a good talk, and I’m grateful for that. I have endless questions for him, but I feel like things will start to make sense soon — as much as they can when your father is Koschey the Deathless and your grandmother is Baba Yaga the Boney Leg!
* * *
What I saw when the door opened was a man slouching in the back of the cage that hung in the middle of that room. He glanced up and froze with a puzzled frown on his thin, nervous face.
Slowly, my father stood up — the cage rocked back and forth, and he had to grab its bars to steady himself — and moved to the front of his bizarre aviary. He was gaunt; I hadn’t noticed that the other night. He studied me warily, almost as if he were expecting some kind of trick. His eyes glinted with angry suspicion as they looked at my hair.
“So,” he said. “What sort of spirit are you?”
Mobilizing all my confidence so as not to seem like a whiny child, I swallowed and said, “Hello. I’m your daughter.”
Dad didn’t look entirely convinced. “Anna Sophia?” He reached out of the cage with a slim hand and beckoned. “Come.”
Feeling odd under his mistrustful stare, I approached and took his hand into both of mine. “It took me a while to find you,” I said. “But I’m here.”
He closed his eyes, caressing my hand with his lank, dry fingers. I didn’t quite know what to feel. My memory still wasn’t working that well, and I had a strange feeling of both remembering my search for him and my life as an orphan in Switzerland and wondering what I was doing here. I wanted to feel more … more what? More emotional, closer to tears, more grateful that I’d finally found Dad? But all I felt was confusion.
Koschey opened his eyes. Now he held my hands in both of his, giving me the slightest squeeze. “Anna Sophia,” he whispered. “Malyshka.”
“I… I’m so happy to see you,” I said. An unusual kind of warmth was spreading from Koschey’s touch up my hands and arms. It was a relaxing, light warmness, and it felt … friendly, as if affection itself had materialized and was seeping into my body. I shuddered. Was this what a parent’s touch was supposed to feel like? Or was it just some sort of magic?
“Malyshka,” he repeated, rolling the word off his tongue syllable by slow syllable. He looked right into my eyes — and in his eyes, I saw the everlasting darkness of a night sky, wisdom beyond even Uncle Misha’s, and Lauraleigh’s gentle tenderness. “It’s so good of you to have come. More than good, in fact. But you shouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t mind the risk,” I said. That warm feeling was spreading through my chest and stomach now, making me want to curl up on the floor before the cage and … talk. Talk to my father until I had told him all about me and learned all about him.
“Squire,” I said, “can you go keep a lookout please? Just in case?” I wasn’t actually worried that we might be caught, but I wanted to be alone for this. I didn’t even look to see if Squire had obeyed.
Koschey smiled. “You shouldn’t risk spending your life in a cage. It gets boring.” He pressed my hands to his heart (though did he even have a heart?) and closed his eyes once more.
“She won’t know I’m here,” I said. “She went off to visit her friend Leshiy. And I put all the hands to sleep. So it’s just you and me … Dad.” It felt so strange to use that word, to really use it and really mean it — even as I wondered whether it was the right one to use. “We have time to talk.”
Dad chuckled and looked into my eyes again. It seemed like he was trying to see something only he could see. I felt like a book being pored over by an exceptionally interested reader. Well, if a book had feelings, that is.
“Anyway,” I said, “let’s figure out a way to free you.” Although I didn’t mean it that way, the words came out sounding a little too self-important, and I cringed.
My father smiled. “This cage was built to keep me locked up forever,” he said. “I’m feeble inside it. At times, I even forget who I am and what I was born to do.”
I caressed his shoulder, watching him lean into my touch. My heart felt like it was filling with something — something gentle, warm, and incredibly powerful.
With love?
So, I thought, that’s what children with families grow up feeling… That’s how love feels.
“Dad, I’m not in a cage,” I said a bit roughly, not wanting to reveal what I was feeling. “Let’s think together. Let’s make a plan. What do you need to restore your power?”
He gave me a sad smile. “Look. This cage was built to siphon almost all my energy from me. Do you see what I mean?”
Confused, I shook my head.
He nodded patiently. “Each person,” he said, “or rather each soul creates immense amounts of energy when alive. So much, in fact, that if people didn’t waste it on feeling miserable and getting distracted, they’d all live till they were nine hundred. Like in your Bible.”
I bit my lip, not believing him but still trying to understand what he was saying. “And?”
“And this energy runs the world around us. But not in the way most people think. With their energy, the people feed … well, they feed creatures like me and Baba Yoga and your Uncle Misha. And even you.” There was that Yoga
again. My ears perked up, but I decided to let that pass for now.
But I didn’t like what he was saying. I frowned. “What do you mean? Are we some kind of vampires?”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that.” He raised a finger to my lips, stopping my objections. “And it’s normal. Souls create that energy, and the universe consumes it. The entire universe is a vampire, really. But it’s a vampire that also makes its energy, its life force, available to anyone who knows how to take it. The universe both takes and gives.”
I withdrew my hands from his and stroked the rough bars of his cage. “And this cage? What does it do?”
“It permits my life force to escape into the world outside, which always happens anyway. But it blocks the incoming flow. I can get no prana to restore my power.”
“Prana?” I asked.
“Yes. Prana. The force that comes from the sun and the stars. The basic power from which all life arises.”
Prana sounded like an Indian word to me, not something Koschey would say. But then again, so did Yoga. I should have ceased being surprised by now. How could I have imagined that I’d understand even a fraction of what he was telling me? That I’d be qualified to judge?
I brought my mind back to the problem at hand. That, at least, I could deal with.
“So we’ve got to break this cage,” I said, tapping its cold bars.
“Yes. Either break it or have your grandmother switch it off so I can build my strength again.”
“Would she ever do it?”
He glanced at me and smiled. “Do you think she’s capable of such grace?”
I caressed his shoulder again, feeling that new, warm emotion spreading through me. My heart felt like it was becoming bigger than my chest, and my eyes were welling with tears. It was fascinating. “I don’t know her nearly as well as you do,” I said. “All I know is… I know she has some sort of plan … I think … something involving ghosts?”
